Harper stood up. “If you don’t mind, Lauren, I’d like to see the exact spot where you saw the woman.”
“I thought I just told you,” said Patrick. “There was no woman.”
Harper smiled tightly. “You did tell me that, Mr Tranter, repeatedly in fact. I simply would like to make a routine check of the area, to put my own mind at rest. I trust you have no objections?”
“Well, I don’t see why you would bother yourself.”
“Nevertheless,” said Harper, “could you please show me, Lauren?”
* * *
Lauren stood in the doorway, clutching the babies. “A bit to the left,” she called, and Harper directed her torch towards the place she’d indicated. The undergrowth was flattened there, just as if a person had trampled it. Something had been here, quite recently, considering the freshness of the broken foliage. Patrick said he hadn’t entered the bushes himself, only checked from the pavement to see if anyone was there. But there was no evidence it had been done by a woman; it could have been a fox, or a dog, or some children making a den, but the fact of it supported the general theory that someone or something had been there; Lauren had seen something, even if it wasn’t what she thought. Apart from a few pieces of litter and a couple of scraps of dirty black fabric, there was nothing else to see. Harper climbed out of the ditch and walked back towards the house where Patrick waited on the doorstep. Lauren had gone back inside.
Patrick spoke quietly, as if he didn’t want his wife to hear. “I contacted the out-of-hours GP about tonight. They’ve told me to make sure Lauren gets a good night’s sleep. If she’s still anxious in the morning I’m to make an appointment. I’m sorry you’ve wasted your time coming all the way out here. I would have stopped her from calling you, if I’d known she was going to.”
Harper glanced back towards the bushes before she spoke. “Has it ever occurred to you, Mr Tranter, that your wife might be telling the truth about seeing this woman?”
He made a little explosive huff. “Don’t be ridiculous, Detective. I was here too and I didn’t see anyone. And that first time, in the hospital, no one saw anything then either. The psychiatrist—and surely he should know—said it was a hallucination. The fact she’s had another one is quite worrying.”
“More, or less worrying than there being a real person outside your house, staring in through the windows?”
“Well, that’s a stupid thing to say. Who would do that, anyway?”
“I don’t know, Mr Tranter,” said Harper. “But perhaps you do.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Patrick, and stepped backwards into the house before shutting the door with a firm click.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
JULY 22ND
LUNCHTIME
When her phone pinged with the message alert, Harper almost didn’t bother to check it. It wouldn’t be Amy, it never was. A week had passed now, and she’d stopped kidding herself it was ever going to happen, which was totally fine with her. Best to keep things simple. She raised her binoculars to her eyes, made a note of the time and took a sip of water. She unwrapped an energy bar, then glanced at her phone and immediately lost her appetite.